MSI 648 Max-F: SiS 648 Goes Mainstream

BIOS Setup and Overclocking Features

MSI's implementation of the AMI BIOS offers an array of information, but not a whole lot tweaking options. We should note that we encountered cold boot issues with the MSI 648 Max-F where the system would randomly not start up after being shut down. We finally received a new BIOS from MSI, which fixed the initial cold boot issues. This latest BIOS was used to perform all benchmark runs, stress tests, and overclocking.

In the BIOS setup you're only able to adjust Vcore up to 1.6V (in .25V increments). This is a very low Vcore ceiling for serious overclockers, and probably not even high enough for semi-serious overclockers.

What's even worse is the fact that, when adjusting Vcore to the "Auto" setting (which is supposed to be the CPU's default Vcore, 1.5V), the actual Vcore as taken from PC Health in the BIOS reads between 1.42-1.47V, much lower than the actual default 1.5V of the 2.26GHz Northwood-B processor we used. Upon setting Vcore to its highest in the BIOS (1.6V), the actual Vcore was only as high as 1.568V. Clearly, the MSI 648 Max isn't the overclocker's board. Going along with the corporate user impression the board's features gave us, this isn't too surprising.

We were pleased that memory voltage (VDIMM) options were better, with 2.8V being the maximum VDIMM allowable (in .1V increments). However, it usually isn't necessary to raise VDIMM very high to get good overclocking results from your memory, so it's hardly a big deal to begin with.

The FSB is adjustable in 1MHz increments all the way up to 200MHz, which is much higher than most overclockers will be able to get out of their Northwood CPU's. However, the MSI 648 Max-F wasn't able to take advantage of its good FSB options; we were only able to overclock our 2.26GHz Northwood-B CPU to 145MHz FSB (~ 2.465GHz) on 1.6V (1.568V actual) using retail cooling (which includes the thermal pad). We've been able to get much higher FSB overclocks with this same processor and identical cooling on other motherboards, so we know the CPU isn't the limiting factor. We can safely conclude that the MSI 648 Max-F motherboard itself is at fault. If you remember back to our ABIT SR7-8X (SiS 648) review, we noticed a similar lack of overclocking potential from the SR7-8X, which allowed us to go no higher than 144MHz FSB using the exact same setup (same cooling, PSU, etc.).

While a bit premature (having only tested two different SiS 648 motherboards), we're beginning to suspect that SiS 648 motherboards aren't spectacular overclockers by nature. Of course, we'll have to wait and see, as ASUS and Gigabyte (among other mainboard companies) will be releasing SiS 648 motherboards very soon. One potential explanation is that these boards are optimized for their low cost and thus won't have much effort put into using higher quality components and trace optimizations that would normally allow the boards to operate significantly out of spec.

It was very pleasing to see MSI include an AGP/PCI lock option in the BIOS. As you can probably already guess, we were able to raise the FSB to 145MHz while keeping the AGP and PCI buses running at 66MHz/33MHz. Hardcore overclockers will love this feature. Unfortunately, they will not like the low overclocking potential of this motherboard, as a 200MHz overclock (2.26GHz to 2.465GHz) isn't too spectacular.